I am trying to make my office go green?

Question

What are some incentives that a president of a company can give to encourage his employees to go green?

Answer 1

When possible, allowing employees to work from home 1 daya week not only makes a great eco-friendly incentive, but also reduces the pollution that would occur on the normal commute.

Answer 2

Five steps to a more environmentally friendly workforce

In light of the independent research and its work with government environmental charity, Global Action Plan, Logicalis suggests some key steps where organisations can focus their environmental efforts to ensure employee buy-in:

Incentives: Organisations must look to offer incentives to employees to bring their good environmental practice into the workplace. Schemes to promote environmental responsibility must provide either a financial or personal incentive, such as ‘energy savings profit sharing' or a change in working contracts, to encourage more flexible working practices and a better work life balance. Government must also look to using more ‘carrots' in corporate and personal tax liabilities to encourage this behaviour.

Leadership: Organisations must demonstrate a commitment to the environmental and energy agenda before employees will feel committed to take part. 80 per cent of staff whose employers don't have an environmental policy, say they would like them to have one. Corporate and Social Responsibility must leave the boardroom and become ingrained in an organisation's culture, in order to create a shared sense of responsibility.

Innovation: Employees want their workplace to be more environmentally friendly and want to be able to control their own impact. Increased use of traditional approaches such as recycling must be complimented with building and workplace innovation, removing the feeling of lack of control from the employee and embedding it within the working environment. Investments in intelligent building systems that automatically manage heating, lighting and cooling would demonstrate commitment from the employer and encourage better overall working practices.

Technology: The deployment of low-carbon and high-efficiency products can have a dramatic effect on the way people work and the amount of energy they use. Suggestions range from the basic, such as eco-friendly kettles in all communal kitchens which use up to 30 per cent less electricity than normal kettles, to using technology such as video conferencing, to reduce corporate travel. Half (46 per cent) of staff have access to tools such as remote email which enables home working, and reduces a company's carbon foot print, but only 15 per cent of contracts support them working in this way.

Education: Helping employees understand the impact of their actions is a cheap and effective way to encourage them to adopt a more environmentally friendly attitude in work. An average PC is responsible for almost 1,000 pounds of CO2 emissions annually - 15 PCs can generate the equivalent CO2 that a typical car produces in a year. Just by switching off PCs when not in use, an SME could save one tonne of carbon – enough to fill four double-decker buses.

The full research report is available to download from the Logicalis website at www.uk.logicalis.com

Answer 3

One of the first things is to ensure each office space is equipped with a recycling receptacle.  This is done where I work, and it increases my recycling  by about 90% just because of the convenience of having the option so close to me.  

Some more abstract ideas are to make sure that long-life low-energy bulbs are used throughout the office, and perhaps offering special incentives to those that walk or bike to work.

Answer 4

ink cartridges from printers can all be recycled.  Have a collection area for them.  I don't give out new ones until the old one is brought to me.  They all go into a box and after a get a full box I ship it back to HP for recycling.  Works great.